Profile: Frank Anderson

Positions that Frank Anderson has held:

Head of the CIA's Near East Division

Quotes

Early 2004

“Everybody in the community was intensely aware that they didn’t have the intelligence. They knew they didn’t have it…. The operational side was beating its head against the wall, saying, ‘We don’t have it. We have to figure out a way to get it.’ The analytical side was understandably frustrated, and doing its best to provide analysis when there is limited, and bad information…. Because of the lack of humanity, we didn’t have enough countervailing intelligence to dismiss what they were selling… So in the end of the day, there was a strong bias to buy the intelligence that fit what the policy makers wanted. And it looks like that’s what happened.”
[Boston Globe, 2/1/2004]

Frank Anderson was a participant or observer in the following events:

Newsday logo. [Source: Sobel Media]Newsday reports on the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson by a news columnist based on information leaked by two administration sources (see July 14, 2003). In an article titled “Columnist Blows CIA Agent’s Cover,” reporters Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce note that CIA officials confirm that Plame Wilson “works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity—at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.” [Newsday, 7/22/2003] It will later be determined that Royce and Phelps’s source is probably a single official, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow (see 5:25 p.m. June 10, 2003, 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), and Before July 14, 2003). [United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 9/27/2004 ] Shortly thereafter, other reporters learn that Plame Wilson was not only an undercover agent, but had what is known as NOC—“nonofficial cover” status (see Fall 1992 - 1996). NOC agents usually operate overseas, often using false identities and job descriptions. NOCs do not have diplomatic protection and thusly are vulnerable to capture, imprisonment, and even murder without official reprisals or even acknowledgement from the US. Vanity Fair reporter Vicky Ward will write in January 2004: “A NOC’s only real defense is his or her cover, which can take years to build. Because of this vulnerability, a NOC’s identity is considered within the CIA to be, as former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack has put it, ‘the holiest of holies.’” [Vanity Fair, 1/2004] Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, refuses to confirm his wife’s covert CIA status, but says that her outing is part of a concerted effort to attack critics of the administration’s intelligence failures (see July 21, 2003). Wilson recently revealed that the administration’s claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger were false (see July 6, 2003). Current and former CIA officials are outraged at Novak’s column, and the apparent leak from the administration. Former CIA Near East division chief Frank Anderson says, “When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that’s mean, that’s petty, it’s irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned.” A current intelligence official says that blowing Plame Wilson’s cover puts everyone she ever dealt with as an undercover CIA operative at risk. Her husband agrees: “If what the two senior administration officials said is true, they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships, and operations.” Furthermore, if true, “this White House has taken an asset out of the” weapons of mass destruction fight, “not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile.” [Newsday, 7/22/2003] In 2007, Plame Wilson will reflect: “Not only was it very rare for the agency to validate that an officer was undercover, no matter what the circumstances, but no one from the agency had told me that my undercover status would be confirmed. It would have been nice to at least get a heads-up from someone at work.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 147]

Newsday reporters Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce have an article published that confirms Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert CIA identity was blown eight days ago by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003) based on information provided by two senior administration officials (see July 8, 2003 and July 8, 2003), works at the CIA on WMD issues as an undercover official with the directorate of operations. Phelps and Royce receive confirmation of this from unnamed intelligeice officials. Plame Wilson’s husband, embattled war critic Joseph Wilson, refuses to confirm his wife’s status as a CIA official, but says the leak of her identity to the press, as well as her position as his wife and even her maiden name, are attempts to intimidate others from speaking out against Bush administration intelligence failures. “It’s a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we’ll take your family and drag them through the mud as well,” he says. Wilson and retired CIA official Frank Anderson say that if Plame Wilson is indeed a covert official (see Fall 1992 - 1996), whoever leaked her identity violated the law, endangered her career, and put the lives of her contacts in foreign countries at risk. Anderson, who formerly headed the CIA’s Near East division, says, “When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that’s mean, that’s petty, it’s irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned.” Wilson adds: “If what the two senior administration officials said is true, they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships, and operations.… [T]his White House has taken an asset out of the” weapons of mass destruction fight, “not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile.… This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation, but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward” to reveal similar intelligence lapses. A senior intelligence official also confirms that Plame Wilson did not send her husband to Niger, as some have alleged (see February 19, 2002 and July 22, 2003). “They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,” he says. “There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason. I can’t figure out what it could be.… We paid his [Wilson’s] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there.” [Newsday, 7/22/2003]

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